Monday, January 6, 2014

Uphill Both Ways!

Dear Familia,

Happy Festival de Reyes!!! Here they celebrate this holiday! It is the day that the three wisemen appeared to Baby Jesus and presented their gifts! I actually believe that it makes more sense to celebrate this than Santa Claus...I have already decided that my children and I are
going to celebrate it! It is a little crazy because here it is much bigger than Christmas...no one really buys presents for Christmas, just for the day that the Three Wise Men appeared! I thought Christmas was a universal celebration....nope...not in Uruguay!

The work is progressing rapidly here in Rivera! It has been a little exciting trying to find all the streets alone, but I have been doing fairly well! Only got lost a handful of times...:)!

I have to talk about the hills in our area...I don´t remember if I talked about them already, so I will write about them (again)! We have mountains in our area! We all grew up hearing the stories of our parents and grandparents walking up hill both ways to school (through snow and hail)...this is different...this is true :)! We have two main areas that we work in...and they are both mountains! On my first day with Hermana Ramirez, she almost died! We started up a little hill, followed by a steeper hill, followed by a huge flight of stone steps, followed by another crazy steep hill, followed by another steep hill, followed by...yep you guessed it...one more crazy, crazy steep hill! It takes about 15 minutes of climbing straight up to reach the top of our area (which contains 95% of our investigators)! Hermana Ramirez thought it was a joke, on the first day, when I said: ¨Don´t look up, it´s just better that way!¨ The good news is that she is adjusting!

I haven´t been writing any crazy stories about food because the food in Rivera is awesome (aka me gaining 20 kilos....). This week we did get fed rice that wasn´t cooked all the way...my poor companion was dying! I ate it all and seconds! I am pretty sure that I have a stomach of steel after Montevideo. A little uncooked rice....that is nothing (try downing three plates of seafood of old, mayonnaise-covered seafood!)

My favorite quotes of this week:
- Me: Who is our prophet today?
Francisco: Joseph Smith (...he lived in the 1800s)
-Me: Do you have a photo of your wife nearby?
Francisco: There!
Me: Where?!
Francisco: There! (He was pointing at a picture of Jesus during the Last Supper...He happens to be slightly blind!)

That is about it for the week! I love you all and hope to see photos of the wedding soon (Ryan...hint hint)!
Love,
Hermana McMurray
ps. Pictures of these hills will be sent very soon :)!